[Open-access] [open-science] Open Science Anthology published

Peter Murray-Rust pm286 at cam.ac.uk
Sun Jan 19 18:41:44 UTC 2014


To clarify, my concern was not whether the book should be licensed CC-NC
but that if so it should not be called "open access". The word "Open" is
defined by the Open Definition of the Open Knowledge Foundation whose list
you are reading - on http://opendefinition.org/

“A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and
redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute
and/or share-alike.”

This definition is widely accepted in many disciplines such as Open-
software, hardware, data. Using "Open Access" to convey a more restricted
meaning does the world a disservice as it makes it almost impossible to
determine, without considerable research, what the person is talking about.
Since misinterpretation could land someone in court it matters.

When Heather Morrison says "fully open access" she includes CC-NC which
goes against the primary technical meaning of the word as expressed by OKD.
The situation is worse in that there are many seriously different sub
interpretations of "open access" that mean that discourse is impossible
even within the "OA" community, let alon between it and the rest of the
world.

Simply: When I say my code is "Open Source" the whole world understands
what I mean. When Heather says "fully open access" nobody by default
understands what she means.

***
On the point of CC-BY not protecting against monopolistic control. CC-BY
allows anyone to make a copy so that a monopolist cannot stop other
channels of distribution. They can create a market that is so universal
(for whatever reason) that everyone buys the product. The only real danger
is that noone preserves and advertises the free copies.

A real example. We are using an Open Source program from source code. It
needs compiling - that's work (and the program itself is hideously written
and difficult to compile). The authors also offer a precompiled binary for
a small fee. There's an attraction to using the binary. But I am still free
to distribute the source code to everyone in the world and I'm also free to
charge for it (I could even rewrite the code and make it better). But I
could not claim to be the sole author. That's how Open Source works


On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 6:20 PM, Pierre-Carl Langlais <
pierrecarl.langlais at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Hi,
>
> If so, I do not quite understand the difference between CC-BY and
> CC-BY-SA. The "no additional restrictions" clause sounds quite similar to
> "share alike": forbidding republication under stricter terms is, so far,
> equivalent to keeping the same license.
>
> I'm quite convinced that NC is a problematic license, that prevents a lot
> of fair and positive uses. Selling the content is  clearly not a problem,
> if only to be able to cover the expenses of diffusion beyond the web
> (printed books, USB keys and so forth).
>
> Yet, avoiding a viral mechanism creates, imho, more problems than it
> solves. It deprives the open access community of a strong incentive: if you
> want to use it, you have to left it open. This is an efficient way, yet not
> coercitive to encourage institutions to become less copyright-centered.
>
> Besides the paradox developed by Heather meets one of my main concerns:
> open access publication could be enclosed once more thanks to the use of a
> non-viral license and a general reliance to commercial service. Wikipedia
> has globally avoided this worrying issue. While the commercial use of the
> encyclopedia is allowed it has not entailed any kind of extensive
> exploitation, thanks to the SA clause. Commercial services cannot profit
> from something that can be reproduced for free. They have to recreate an
> artificial paywall to perpetuate the value.
>
> PCL
>
>
> Le 19/01/14 18:49, Jan Velterop a écrit :
>
>
>  On 19 Jan 2014, at 15:49, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.cawrote:
> [snip]
>
> However, one of the potential pitfalls of open licensing we should be
> paying more attention to is that "no downstream restrictions" includes "no
> downstream restrictions on paywalls".
>
>
>  I don't think it does. From the CC-BY licence:
>
>    - *"No additional restrictions* — You may not apply legal terms or technological
>    measures <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/#> that legally
>    restrict others from doing anything the license permits."
>    - A paywall that everybody can just walk around is no more than an
>    invitation to make a payment, a donation. Which a potential user can
>    ignore.
>    - NC is a control mechanism. It has no place in a knowledge
>    environment that is publicly funded for the benefit of society at large.
>    - Jan Velterop
>
>  In summary, the view that open access can be usefully narrowly defined
> through legal terms is the view of a subset of the open access community.
>
>  Best,
>
>  Heather Morrison
>
> On Jan 19, 2014, at 7:36 AM, "Emanuil Tolev" <emanuil at cottagelabs.com>
> wrote:
>
>  Discrimination based on field of endeavour I thought was the problem.
>
>  Even if some copyright exceptions allow use in situations in which the
> license didn't *intend* to allow such use, the license still discriminates
> based on the type of activity ("field of endeavour") - doesn't allow
> commercial use.
>
>  The legal ability to use something for commercial reasons and being told
> not to by the license are two separate things, though obviously related.
> Being told not to by the license makes it a non-open license according to
> OKD.
>
>  This isn't to say non-commercial licenses are evil in all situations, I
> can't pass that judgement. But if you use a non-commercial clause, you
> certainly can't call the thing "open access" - it's accessible to some part
> of the population, but it is not "open". Like this anthology (which by the
> way looks like it's quite nice).
>
>  Greetings,
> Emanuil
>
> On Sunday, 19 January 2014, Pal Lykkja <lykkja at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  What is the problem with CC-NC if it will be possible to reuse like TDM
>> throught copyright exceptions that EU are working for?
>>
>>  Pål Lykkja
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 8:45 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>wrote:
>>
>>>  Sounds useful.
>>>
>>>  One comment. CC-NC is not Open Access under BOAI- and OKD- definitions.
>>> I'd urge you to make the book CC-BY. If there are reasons that you can't do
>>> this, please drop the term "Open Access" and call it "free-of-charge".
>>> CC-NC forbids many forms of redistribution and re-use
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 7:40 PM, Ulrich Herb <u.herb at scinoptica.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear lists,
>>>>
>>>> perhaps this might be of interest: Yesterday an anthology on Open
>>>> Science was published: "Opening Science - The Evolving Guide on How the
>>>> Internet is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing". It
>>>> has been edited by Sönke Bartling from the German Cancer Research Center in
>>>> Heidelberg and  Sascha Friesike, researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt
>>>> Institute in Berlin. The anthology knows four manifestations: it is
>>>> available as a printed book,  as an Open Access e-Book or PDF collection
>>>> under a CC BY-NC license, and as an editable living document via Github.
>>>> for further information please visit:
>>>> http://www.openingscience.org/get-the-book/
>>>>
>>>> Best regards
>>>>
>>>> Ulrich Herb
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> scinoptica science consulting and publishing consulting
>>>> POB 10 13 13
>>>> D-66013 Saarbrücken
>>>> Germany
>>>> http://www.scinoptica.com/pages/en/start.php
>>>> +49-(0)157 30306851
>>>> http://twitter.com/#!/scinoptica
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  --
>>> Peter Murray-Rust
>>> Reader in Molecular Informatics
>>> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>>> University of Cambridge
>>> CB2 1EW, UK
>>> +44-1223-763069
>>>
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-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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